During a recent, candid conversation at the Locarno Film Festival, Oscar-winning actress Zoe Saldaña addressed an exhausting reality that many prominent figures from marginalized backgrounds face on a regular basis: the frustration of being the sole woman or person of color in the room, only to be peppered with political questions about diversity and representation rather than being asked about her craft. Saldaña pointed out that the heavy pressure to address systemic representation in film and television is far too often placed on the shoulders of marginalized individuals, letting Hollywood’s actual gatekeepers off the hook.
"I’m sorry, you don’t ask the only person that comes from the marginalized community. You ask the other 80 of them that are part of the gatekeepers, and you ask them if they know the answer because I think we’re making people of color work double to be in the room," Saldaña told Variety.
If you happen to be a Black or brown woman navigating professional spaces, you probably know exactly what Saldaña is referring to. The double work described by the actress rarely stops once we finally manage to get through the door; instead, it tends to follow us everywhere we go. Many of us do not simply show up to do the baseline jobs we were explicitly hired to perform. We also carry an unspoken, persistent pressure to explain our culture, represent our broader communities, translate our unique lived experiences, and educate others about complex systemic issues affecting our daily lives—issues and structural barriers that we were never responsible for creating in the first place.
As a Latina—and specifically as a Latina journalist who has dedicated my entire professional career to telling nuanced stories for my community—I have found myself trapped in this exact situation far too many times to count. I have even had to sit down with leadership and explicitly explain that I do not believe every single interview I conduct with a Latine celebrity needs to center entirely on representation.
There is, in fact, an established term for this phenomenon: cultural taxation. Experts and organizational researchers define cultural taxation as the extra, and frequently unpaid, labor expected from individuals in the workplace who carry marginalized or underrepresented identities, tasking them with handling diversity initiatives completely outside the scope of their normal job duties.
I experienced a glaring example of this early in my career during a brief stint in a public relations job shortly after graduating college, at a time when I was still desperately struggling to secure stable work outside of magazine internships. I ultimately left that position within a matter of weeks after realizing I had essentially been hired to serve as the company’s designated Latina representative. The firm was comprised entirely of white women, with me as their singular non-white hire, and they made it abundantly clear during my very first week that I was brought on largely because certain beauty and lifestyle brands they represented wanted to secure access to Latina editors and Spanish-language or multicultural publications.
I will never forget the surreal afternoon when my direct supervisor turned to me and casually asked, "How do you think Latina skin reacts to a brown sugar scrub?" I genuinely could not believe the words I was hearing. I remember responding, "You know that Latinas consist of individuals who vary racially and have vastly different skin tones, skin types, and skin textures, just like any other demographic group, right?" She looked at me with open annoyance, as if she wanted to dismiss me on the spot, immediately brushed off my thoughtful response, handed me a product sample, and said, "Try this over the next couple of days and let me know what you think." I do not think I have ever quit a job quite so quickly in my entire life.
The fundamental truth is that holding a specific identity does not give anyone the authority to speak uniformly for every single person who shares that background. Even as a Latina who has successfully overseen prominent Latina media sites and editorial verticals, I have repeatedly had to explain this vital nuance to people I have reported to. As a Dominican American raised in Queens—considering all the intricate, intersectional facets of my life that have shaped who I am—I cannot possibly represent the entirety of Latinidad. Nor can I serve as a blanket spokesperson for all Dominicans; our individual experiences, immigration histories, and perspectives are vastly different. When institutions expect this kind of monolithic representation from human beings, that is precisely where the dehumanization begins. You suddenly stop being perceived as an individual person with your own thoughts and flaws, and instead transform into a walking, talking symbol for an entire culture.
In my own experiences when this dynamic took hold, it suddenly felt as though I was no longer Johanna—the individual professional who happened to be Latina—but rather "the Latina in the room who is expected to have an answer" for everything tied to my demographic.
Saldaña articulated an essential point when she argued that this heavy intellectual and emotional labor should rightly fall on systemic gatekeepers rather than on marginalized communities. When the entire burden is shifted onto a person from a marginalized group to represent that group and single-handedly address the systemic issues it faces, those who hold actual institutional power are let entirely off the hook and stripped of their responsibility. This happens despite the reality that these gatekeepers are typically the only ones with sufficient power and capital to create the necessary structural change. Why is the person with the least amount of institutional power suddenly made responsible for solving an industry-wide or institutional failure?
Saldaña was speaking her absolute truth: do not ask me to solve Hollywood’s deeply entrenched representation problem—ask the people who actually wield the power to change Hollywood. To be entirely clear, she was by no means suggesting that people should "not talk to me about my identity or my heritage." Saldaña has consistently expressed immense pride in her culture and in being a Latina woman. What she was conveying is that the core problem begins when our multifaceted identities become the single, narrow lens through which we are permitted to be seen by the industry and the public. Saldaña is an Oscar-winning actress, a major box-office draw, and a versatile performer—she is immeasurably more than her identity. When she is out promoting a major film, there is a vast array of topics she can discuss beyond the persistent diversity and inclusion issues that plague Hollywood. Her Latinidad is an integral part of who she is, but it is not the entirety of her existence.
We talk incessantly in media, corporate spaces, and cultural forums about wanting more people from marginalized communities in the room. In my own professional circles, I am constantly advocating for the necessity of having more Latinas in the big, important rooms where decisions are made. Yet, we rarely have honest conversations about what actually happens once we successfully get inside those doors, a reality that Saldaña bravely highlighted. If we are immediately expected to carry the weight of representing everyone who looks like us, are we truly being invited into those high-level rooms for our professional skills, our insights, and our expertise? Or are we simply being asked to fill a quota and act as symbolic representatives of our communities? As history and personal experience have shown, those two things are profoundly different.
Over the years of navigating these professional spaces, I have learned that there is a stark, undeniable difference between genuine representation and human personhood. I have sat in far too many conference rooms where being the sole Latina meant everyone else viewed me strictly as a walking emblem of diversity, entirely forgetting that I am a living, breathing human being who simply happens to be Latina.
I am deeply glad that Saldaña used her prominent platform to call out this tiring dynamic, because it is long past time for institutions to stop demanding this invisible labor from us. We deserve to take up space in professional rooms—regardless of our specific industry, profession, or level of expertise—without being burdened by the unspoken expectation that we must represent every single person in our community. As Latinas, I would love to witness a future where we are invited into rooms as whole, complete people, rather than being expected to drag an entire community in with us on our backs. I would love that for all of us.
